Weekend Reading: May 14, 2016

Good morning to you all! I apologize for this being later than usual, but I’m under the weather. If you’re new to this email/blog post, then what you’re reading is a summary of my favorite articles, books, videos, blogs and more from this past week. Let’s face it, I’m a nerd who reads a lot so you don’t have to. The way to read this is to scan the whole thing and just pick out what you find most interesting. Okay? Let’s go…

In 1972 when Congress passed Title IX of the Education Amendments, no one thought that “sex” meant “gender identity.” It didn’t mean it then, and it doesn’t mean it now. The Obama administration is unlawfully rewriting federal law. The term “sex” is not ambiguous, and is not subject to executive branch agencies redefining to now mean “gender identity.”

Shocking Stuff:‘An Indian teen was raped by her father. Village elders had her whipped.’ – this is a longer story, and it doesn’t just involve the one situation from the headline, but gives some interesting perspective into the nature of the government structures, and the local battle for control over decision making on disputes and legal/social matters. In America, where culturally we have a history of understanding Christian morality (until recently), local control of social issues (schools, taxes, judicial disputes etc) has been seen as a good thing – a guard against government tyranny (see the story above!).But here, you start to see how superstition actually makes that a dangerous thing for individuals who are weaker in their society. I’m not making generalizations – just find it interesting how topsy-turvey this is.

On a more encouraging note…A fellow named Geoffrey Thomas has a thoughtful post on Ligonier this week called ‘Growing in Humility’. There wasn’t a lot of gospel application in here, but what I did like was the awe and wonder factor – lots to contemplate about what Christ has done.

I don’t care if you like the NBA or not, this was saaweeet: Stephen Curry’s ultimate career mixtape– I really couldn’t look away. In fact, I got interrupted by a call or something in the middle, and I found myself angry that I had to pause the video!

One of the things that struck me this week about Trump was how revolting some of my non-Christian friends found him. In other words, they don’t even have the Spirit of God living within them, but were brought up by good parents, had certain ethical standards etc. and they can’t vote for him in good conscience. To you Christians who are over the moon for him – that ought to shame you a bit. What is missing in the discussion since Sen. Cruz dropped out of the race is whether or not voting/supporting trump can be morally defensible as a pragmatic way to try and keep the Supreme Court in the hands of (hopefully more) reasonable people and not activist judges. To me, that is the thing conservatives need to grapple with more than anything else….of course Russell Moore might disagree. My perspective is a little different, and its not firmly set, but I think there are likely moral ways to engage in the general election as a political operative or activist, without saying (in affect) “I agree with what Trump says and does”. Some of you might disagree – some of you don’t work in politics. Admittedly, I’m still working through the matter mentally…

On the Democratic Side, the top headline came from the Wall Street Journal: Clinton Charity Aided Clinton Friends. When people refer to the “corruption” of the Clintons, this is the kind of thing they’re talking about (in case you were wondering haha!). One friend called this the ‘Clinton Crime Syndicate’ on his Facebook wall.

The topic was income inequality. My good friend Ben F. pointed out that when it comes to income inequality, we are asking the wrong questions. He responded to the article I posted by saying that we need to approach this issue by asking the following questions (and I am paraphrasing some of his wording):

Does an American in this day and age, have opportunity to freely pursue and acquire wealth? (It’s all about opportunity)

Does our system keep people down or enable them to move up, without regard to their birth situation (abroad, race, socioeconomics of their parents, school district and so forth) And what he’s getting at here is this: Are the rich wealthy at the expense of the poor? Are they to blame?

What does “good” look like in terms of optimum income distribution? We have to ask, “Would it ever really look more ‘equal’?”

Are we hoping to attain an outcome of equal opportunities or equal outcomes?